Sited on the Terror rift of the Western Ross Sea, Antarctica, Mount Erebus is the continent's most active volcano and has a rare convecting magma lake at its summit. Peter Kelly of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and his colleagues investigated the composition of this lake using lava bombs it spewed forth from 1972 to 2004.
Analysis of the glass and mineral composition of these bombs indicates that the temperature of the magma has been stable during this period, contradicting a previous suggestion of a cooling. Another analysis of 11 dated lava samples from the summit plateau ranging back to 17,000 years ago shows that the volcano has erupted lava with the same bulk composition for all this time.
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Geology: Old Faithful Erebus. Nature 457, 238 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/457238a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/457238a
